Apparently,
unlike some Americans I support President Obama’s careful and deliberate
assessment of what to do with the extremist terrorist group, ISIS. We’ve heard the knee-jerk criticism of Obama,
an understandable emotional reaction to the sickening images of beheadings of
journalists on the internet. Why is he
on the golf course instead of in Washington devising a devastating and decisive response?!!!! (As if planning and policy comes to a
standstill as Obama slices a tee shot.
And as if we have an immediate strategy for dealing with all permutations
of such groups. And as if we can do anything to make this group simply disappear.)
When
President Obama takes to the TV tomorrow we’ll hear more specifics about dealing
with ISIS, and there is a good summary of what to expect on ABC’s blog.
It’s
pretty clear that this is not a “boots on the ground” war, but one similar to what we’ve waged against Al Qaeda. ISIS is even better organized and funded. It is unlikely we can “defeat them” in the
military sense of the word. They are
like a form of the black plague which at best can be forced into remission but
is easily activated. It is an especially
dangerous group as they know how to court social media and they are positioning
themselves as the long sought after Islamic caliphate. We’re talking about trying to contend with
about 1,000 years of history and religious fervor in that case.
No
you don’t march on them; you surgically and systematically degrade their
capabilities (as has already been said by Obama). And of course we must develop collaboration with
European and Arab states for containing ISIS, and especially how it is being
financed. Judging by their sophisticated
weaponry, more like an army than a fragmented terrorist group, some factions of
the oil rich Middle East states would seem to be involved. Is this a middle-eastern incarnation of the
protection racket? Intelligence is needed to identify and choke off those
funds.
Indeed,
those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it. As Adam Gopnik recently wrote in his article
in The New Yorker, “Does It Help to Know History?” ISIS is a horrible group
doing horrible things, and there are many factors behind its rise. But they
came to be a threat and a power less because of all we didn’t do than because
of certain things we did do—foremost among them that massive, forward
intervention, the Iraq War. (The historical question to which ISIS is the
answer is: What could possibly be worse than Saddam Hussein?)
